My Must Haves

• Pandora – This is by far my most-used App. A personalized radio station based on your favorite songs or artist goes incredibly far when I’m in the zone at work coding up some wacky stuff.
• Facebook – The world’s biggest time drain, now available anywhere you are! In all seriousness, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with my friends, and doing this while I’m on the move is a real plus
• Sportacular – Gotta follow my Wolverines, Tigers, Pistons, Lions (0-16 ouch!), and Brewers. Sportacular is the best way I’ve found to get score updates – I use this one every time my team is playing. The developers seem pretty active too, and have added many more features over the last few months.
• Mobile News – Gotta know what’s going on around the world! I usually check this to start out the morning. My one beef is that the ‘Local’ area for 53202 is Chicago — What about the good land?? — at least report on Brett Farve’s grandmother or something…
• TwitterFon – I am brand new to Twitter, and I just grabbed one of the Apps that I saw my buddy using. I’m not sure if this is the best one, but I’m loving Twitter! Is there a better one out there? Let me know!
• Bloomberg – I’m a geek for financial news – hard to read it these days! The news updates on this app are great for a world-picture of what’s going on financially. I check it every morning
• SnapTell - I don’t use this that often, but it works like a charm when I do. I was at the bookstore the other day, and snapped up a few pics of books that I wanted. It recognized them all without a problem (and they were all much cheaper used or on Amazon…) If anyone is interested in the books I snapped, they were: Hot Flat and Crowded, 13 things that don’t make sense, Rigged, and The Last Lecture
• LinkedIn - I don’t like visiting the website that often (is anyone else bothered by site usability? It just seems so clunky to navigate your connections). This App is a good way to keep up to date on your professional network, without having to be at a computer.
• Mint – This App could be wayyyy better (like why can’t I drill into my actual stock holdings?) I was surprised with it given how much I like the actual site. Regardless, I use it to check my finances. I am looking forward to bigger and better things from them in the future.
• iPhunny and IcanHazCheezburger - Come on, everyone needs a little fun once in a while! I could spend endless hours on these two, and, although I am glad I don’t, they are great when you are passing time at the airport. iPhunny is probably less well known – it lets you flip through all of the late night TV jokes. Cheezburger gives you those wonderful LolCats, and also 7 other hilarious sites, including one of my web-favorites: FailBlog

I like, but not crazy about

• I love the idea of the Loopt App, but I’m not crazy about it because I don’t know many people who actively use it. I’m looking for a one-stop shop for my social networking needs. What applications are out there? Let me know.

Shortest Lived app on my phone

Most applications that I had to register for, that I wasn’t already registered for – died a quick and painless death. The most entertaining part was the shaking button with the X on upper-right corner! (I’m sensing an interesting application — if only Apple would give us the data – shortest / longest lived apps)

I like, but never use

• Mocha VNC Lite - Being a super-geek, this was awesome the first time I used it!….and I haven’t used it since. I was surprised by the lack of choppiness…I was expecting much worse. Needless to say, if I ever would like to view my 2 19inch monitors again on a 2 by 3 inch screen, I will surely pick this application to do it.
• Trulia - When I start buying houses like they are Wii games, I will let you know…and my activity on this application will pick up.

Looking to Replace ASAP

• <Insert Random ToDo App Here> – I have a crappy ToDo list that I’m not thrilled about. Given that about 50% of the apps on the App store are ToDo lists (and apparently, 49% are Farting Apps that actually make money – glad to know entrepreneurship is alive and well!) — I am probably not willing to pay any money for a new ToDo list — unless you can convince me of a great one to buy. Anyway, help me out! I need a new todo list, recommendations for me?
• ! (Built-in iPhone calendar app) – I need something new for this too… Having little dots showing up on the dates just isn’t cutting it for me anymore. What are you using? Ideally, I want a free one (or maybe I can scrape together 99cents). If it is awesome, I will pay for it – give me some suggestions.

What I am missing

That is for you to tell me! Besides the above two apps above that I need… I’m looking for more to make my iPhone a better all-in-one gadget. What apps do you have that rock? Ideally, I’m not paying much for an App (99 cents has been my threshold thus far — and it was to download two apps that my co-worker built) —- unless I can be convinced that it’s definitely worth it

Please comment to this post and let me know…my iPhone is dying for some new bits!

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After a few days of usage, I am starting to see why people use it — I am realizing that knowing what everyone else is doing (in 140 characters or less) is just scraping the surface of the power that Twitter can bring to the web.

In my eyes, Twitter has several very good things going for it:

• It does one thing, and it does that one thing well – The idea is simple, not overwhelming to users, and is sticky. I tend to lose interest in apps that just have too much stuff going. All I have to do with Twitter is post tweets, look at other people’s tweets, and find other people who have interesting things to say. Dead simple!
• It is easy to adopt and does not take a significant amount of time to set up. use. With twitter, I can create a login name, and start posting!
• The openness of the Twitter Search API gives it tremendous value as a platform for other interesting applications – At first inspection, it looks like you can search for basically anything (words, users, hashtags) in Twitter messages. My brain starts spinning with interesting applications you could build with this powerful API…

Here are some possible apps I could think of that you could build with the Twitter Search API. I didn’t really search around, so I have no idea if something similar to these apps has actually been implemented already:

• Build a service that can aggregate impromptu events. For example, a user interested in organizing a pick-up game of basketball in Milwaukee could Tweet ‘#impromptu basketball game 53202 6:30pm monday’ The service could organize these events, and provide a way for other users to show interest
• Use it to exchange tickets to events at the last minute. For example, a user could Tweet ‘#ticketsto Bucks/Pistons fourth row available for $20′
• Integrate with GasBuddy so that users can Tweet the latest Gas prices
• Use it as a Wii Finder (are those things still hard to find?) ‘#wii-found at target on bluemound 53202′
• Build an emotion aggregator (for example, tweet ‘#imfeeling awesome after watching the pistons win’). The aggreagator could aggregate by emotions, and show interesting views on the data.

How do the above benefits weigh against the potential issues with Twitter?

One of the potential issues I thought Twitter would have is user adoption. I am fairly tech-saavy, and it took me over a year and a half to sign up since Twitter was released. A lot of my friends, who are also tech-saavy, either have never used Twitter, or used it for a short time and lost interest. Is this indicative that Twitter only appeals to a small subset of techies? The data indicates otherwise, with Twitter reporting 752% growth this year in users (up from 500k to 4.43m). This rapid growth may indicate that Twitter is about to hit a major Tipping Point.

Another potential issue that seems to be one with every social networking site is data privacy-related concerns. With any social network, there seems to be a constant trade-off between building your Weak Ties and preserving your privacy. We often gain the most valuable information from people who are outside our close network of friends. It is very easy to expand your group of Weak Ties on Twitter. As a trade-off to this, it seems fairly easy for unwanted people to become your Weak Ties (and for you to propagate information to them) when you may rather not be tied to those people at all. It is arguably easier for this to happen on Twitter than on Facebook – but this is one of the main benefits I see of Twitter over something like Facebook – Twitter is designed in such a way to improve the quality of your weak ties. You make your decisions on which Weak Ties to connect to based on what the user is saying / thinking (e.g. through their Tweets), rather than who the user is connected to (which seems to be the normal case on Facebook).

I am excited to have seen the value in Twitter, and I plan to use it actively. I am also planning to start playing around with the Search API to see if I can build a simple application (possibly one of the ones I described above).

What does everyone think? What is the best utilization of the Twitter API in an application so far? It seems the possibilities are endless. What about use adoption? Do your non-techie friends use Twitter? And if so, do they continue to use it and see a value in the service? Looking forward to hearing any feedback you have.